Chapter Text
Stede Bonnet can't say he has many friends, let alone friends with whom he regularly exchanges emails or text messages. His work email - as much as possible - receives a stack of messages every day from publishers, smaller authors or clients, while his private email... well, there's nothing on his private email, apart from messages from Mary, who sends him attachments of the bills they still, despite their divorce, split in half.
His surprise is all the greater when a mysterious message from [email protected] arrives in his mailbox one evening. At first he intends to ignore it; after all, Lucius did educate him about scammers. Curiosity gets the better of him though, and after all, his anti-virus didn't detect anything suspicious, so....
Well, so the story begins.
At first, Stede is sure that this is another Lucius' prank. However, he realises that the boy does not know his private email address. Next in the queue of suspects are the Badminton brothers, but here the case is similar. Stede does not suspect Mary, let alone Alma and Louis (even if they are currently of an age where this kind of fooling around is the order of the day). So one is left to believe that the bizarre email was indeed written by Ed, who thought he was sending a message into the void.
Stede has no intention of writing back and becoming embroiled in the life of a random man on the internet who seems to have enough problems already. So he closes his laptop and tries to return to his evening routine: book and ginger tea. His gaze, however, is unable to focus on the letters and every now and then escapes towards the computer. He even feels remorseful that he has read someone else's diary. After all, that was Ed's intention. Stede finally decides that he has to write to the man, if only so that he doesn't get any more messages that weren't meant for his eyes. It was all too private and Ed, after all, has a right to know that he's not sending messages into nothingness at all.
Stede finally clicks the reply icon and starts writing.